Post-Rockist Picks of 2008: Amy

2008: BETTER LUCK NEXT YEAR: THE MIX CD

Friends: the gig is up. Last year I put together a mix CD for you, dear readers, as a highly self-conscious and tongue-in-cheek exercise in revisiting the year, made relevant only by merit of my return to the world of indie rock after a long, wandering absence.

This year bears no such self-important or self-derogatory flourish. This year was epic. And mostly shitty. And while in some way, no amount of good music can change any of that, it is true, ultimately, that music is an anchor in otherwise stormy seas. I’m not sure this mix CD does this year poetic justice, but I hope it takes an acceptable stab in that emotional direction.

“Fernando,” ABBA, 1976

I went to Kalamazoo for New Year’s Eve to reunite with some college friends, and I hitched a ride with a mysterious man named Fernando. This song was playing in the car when I met him for the first time, and it played over and over again until I realized it was on repeat. I said, “Is this on repeat?” And Fernando said, “Oh, damn! You figured it out!” It was the beginning of an often frustrating but generally beautiful friendship, and in its nascence, I listened to this song over and over again.

“A Little Lost,” Jens Lekman

Four Songs by Arthur Russell, 2007

In June I wrote about a fresh heartbreak and included this song. Casting a romantic eye on this year I might say that this song could have been the turning point. When Jens played it to a hushed theater –alone at center stage with a thumb piano –I looked at the young man sitting next to me and thought, “This could be serious.” And from there on out, the stakes started to climb. One brief, pretty love affair was just the beginning.

“Skinny Love,” Bon Iver

For Emma, Forever Ago, 2008

By far the most personally affecting album I listened to in 2008. This song sums it up for me –the yearning to have some solid ground to stand on, something to trust, the struggles we all face in our flailing attempts at self-improvement and the distraction that always exists in the quest for genuine love.

“Honey, Won’t You Let Me In,” The Tallest Man on Earth

Shallow Grave, 2008

On a whim I went home for Memorial Day, and my friend John and I stayed up all night on his back porch drinking wine and whiskey by candlelight and caught each other up on our strange and changing lives. This album will always make me think of him, and the thrill of the spring.

“Michael, the Lone Archer of the North Shore,” Deastro

Keepers, 2008

I dated two men named Michael, one right after the other. Both of them broke me a little bit, and both of them broke up with me, one for an asparagus farm, one via Facebook message after a night he spent so blotto that he doesn’t remember getting the shit kicked out of him. This song reminds me of the better parts of both of them. I really like this album.

“Death Take Your Fiddle,” Spiritualized

Songs in A&E, 2008

This year more than any before it evoked the specter of death at every turn. I lost my uncle in July, the body of the man in the studio next door to our office was discovered almost two weeks after he died, I learned of suicides of high school classmates and former business associates and fatal car accidents involving college friends. This dark, spooky song shouldn’t make me feel better about any of that, but it does, and that’s what music is all about. Seeing Spiritualized was also one of the better concert-going experiences of 2008.

“Time to Pretend,” MGMT

Oracular Spectacular, 2008

It wasn’t until October –when, driving around Detroit, my friend turned this song on and said, “you know ! I like this album” –that I realized I have heard this album in every strange situation and on every ridiculous road trip and during production at the office and on the radio and at parties and all over the place. It’s almost getting tiresome and I don’t really want to hear it anymore, but I couldn’t leave it off of the mix because it has such sheer power to bring to mind so much with so little. I woke up singing the resigned refrain –“everything must run its course” –all the time this summer.

“Let it Roll,” Baby Teeth

Hustle Beach –to be released 2009

This cheeky power ballad gave me so much odd, triumphant hope every time I heard it. Even in some seriously dark hours, it gave me the will to fight. I also like that this song is from the future. This recording is from a Daytrotter session. Maybe my favorite song of the whole year, and I think Hustle Beach is already a shoe-in for next year’s top whatevers.

“Danke Schoen,” Wayne Newton, 1963

Starting in June with an ill-advised assignment in Branson, Missouri, the magazine began sending its most mean-spirited and impetuous reports on uniquely American road trips. On our trip to Des Moines, IA, in August, we were thrilled to learn that we would be staying in the same hotel as Wayne Fucking Newton, who was in town for some sort of really important Arabian horse exposition. We spent the whole weekend trying to track him down. And we failed. But we did discover Mr. Newton’s catalog, of which this song is the only notable work. If I could say one thing to the year 2008, it would be: Thank you for all the joy and pain.

“Get On Up,” The Esquires, 1967

I remembered this song existed when a wonderful man played it for me on a charmed October morning. Less than two weeks later, I was sitting next to that guy who sings the bass line (“Get on up ! get on up !”) at a bar. I didn’t know it was him. We talked about Barack Obama for a while, and the death of Four Tops lead singer Levi Stubbs, and then he was invited to the stage for an impromptu rendition of “Get On Up.” Oh my god.

^{(Photo Credit Joe Kirschling. And yes, Aaron is wearing an Iron Maiden shirt)}

“The Mouths of Fields,” Juniper Tar

To the Trees, 2008

I saw these handsome Milwaukee gentlemen for the first time this year and was instantly infatuated. This song in particular always chokes me up, and whenever I admit to my friends in the band that I cry about it they make fun of me and I deserve it. I saw them play on one of the happiest days of the whole fall, when I went to an apple orchard with my friends and an adorable 2-year-old and we played with the goats and saw some bunnies and ate some apples and afterward went to A&W. The band didn’t play at the orchard, or at A&W, but they might as well have.

“Gila,” Beach House

Devotion, 2008

I’m not sure what it is about this song. I think it speaks for itself, pitch-perfectly, and I think it speaks for my internal emotional world in the latter half of the year with jaw-dropping clarity.

“No One Does It Like You,” Department of Eagles

In Ear Park, 2008

Thanks, Post-Rockists, for introducing me to this marvelous album! I love it! This song is so catchy and buoyant. Which at this point in the mix CD, and in the chronology of 2008, becomes dreadfully important.

“Take Me,” Karen Dalton

In My Own Time, 1971

My discovery of Karen Dalton seems to prove that there is a Right Time to hear all of the music that becomes a big part of your life, and this year was definitely the Right Time to discover her, and listen to her endlessly, and put this song on repeat at the end of many chilly, sad night. When I went home for Thanksgiving, John and I listened to this album together and drank beers on the couch and took a long walk in our old neighborhood, which kind of brings everything full circle, summer’s brink to autumn’s quiet slip into snow.

doesn’t milwaukee look like fun?

“Latest Flame,” Quinn Scharber and the !

Being Nice Won’t Save Milwaukee, 2008

There’s really nothing like a simple but expertly crafted rock song to take the edge off, and Quinn delivers. He likes to invite audience members on stage to play tambourines, and in December I was a proud tambourine-welding/booty-shaking/clapping and singing along member of the orchestra.

“This Will Be Our Year,” The Zombies

Odyssey and Oracle, 1967

I rediscovered the Zombies this year and they accompanied many of 2008’s most joyful, redeeming moments, of which there were many, despite my melodramatic howling about how everything turned out.

But damn, do I hope this is true of 2009.